“Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta, the crown jewel in its flagship franchise, swelled to a network-best 4.6 million viewers in February. The current season, one of the top five nonfiction series across all of cable, skews overwhelmingly African-American, at 68 percent. “

“I sat next to a woman who told me she had children and normally rushed home after work, but that she liked the idea of seeing a 50-minute show in her lunch hour. Tellingly, as a result of seeing a lunchtime show she was planning to see an evening show later in the month.”

“Born into the East Coast establishment, Matthiessen ran from it, and in the running became a novelist, a C.I.A. agent, a founder of The Paris Review, author of more than 30 books, a naturalist, an activist and a master in one of the most respected lineages in Zen.”

The museum, one of Washington’s top tourist attractions, “will use the money to renovate its main exhibition space that serves as home to such icons of aviation as the Wright Brothers’ airplane and Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.”

“According to the results of a new survey … 63% of residents in the UK want to see their local council budgeting at least 50p per person every week on arts, museums and heritage.” The actual figure, averaged across England’s local councils, is 16p; only three spend more than 50p.

“Known for recognizing talent and nurturing it, for making connections among artists – ‘an instinctive, intellectual switchboard,’ [one observer] wrote of her – Ms. Morgan was at various times an agent, an amanuensis, an administrator, a salon-keeper and a behind-the-scenes alchemist who helped forge creative partnerships for decades.”

“Durant mentioned it several times in interviews in the 1970s, once calling it ‘a not very serious book which answers the questions of what I think about government, life, death, God.’ But the whereabouts of the manuscript were unknown before it was found in a box in his granddaughter’s attic last year.”

“Goldsmith, who set aside a pianistic career to write for High Fidelity magazine in the heyday of the classical LP, became a familiar and influential critical voice for music lovers in the ’50s and ’60s, and could be spotted almost any night of the week in the press section of one or another of the New York concert halls, listening intently and then expounding to his colleagues on the music.” (includes audio)

“Her style has both tone and undertone; it attempts to register the impossibility of saying very much, but it insists on the right to say a little. So what is essential is the voice itself, its ways of knowing and unknowing. An observation; a dry fact; a memory; something noticed; someone encountered; a joke; something wry; a provocation; something playful.”

“Announced last week, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is not just one of two new Wu-Tang records: the 128-minute double album will only be pressed once, in a unique edition that will tour festivals and galleries. According to RZA, there have already been numerous offers to purchase the music once it finishes its exhibition circuit.”

“Scientists released the most detailed map ever made of the fetal human brain today. It contains a massive amount of information about gene activity at a crucial time in development — just as the cerebral cortex is developing. The scientists believe it holds important clues about the biological origins of disorders like autism, as well as insights into what makes the human brain unique.”

“Do artists have a special responsibility to speak out about injustice? Or do artists contribute best to social welfare by the practice of their art, and that alone? This issue is pertinent in classical music, because the field is considered, for better or worse, a high art with a mystique of gravitas and enlightenment.”

Jorma Panula, the now-83-year-old professor who trained a flock of talented maestros that includes Esa-Pekka Salonen, Osmo Vänskä, Sakari Oramo, and (ahem) Susanna Mälkki, told a Finnish news broadcaster, “They can come [to my masterclasses] and try. It’s not a problem – if they … take more feminine music. Bruckner or Stravinsky will not do, but Debussy is OK. This is a purely biological question.”

“Amazon has a vested interest in making sure it is present at every moment of possible consumption, which is all the time. It wants to get into that television screen and start to build a relationship.” The tool: Fire TV, a new set-top box.

So no, nothing had gone permanently wrong in my head, or at least nothing had gone wrong that had not been in the process of going wrong for a while, but I now regarded my head and the brain snuggled warmly inside it in a new and vulnerable way.